Convert a character vector to uppercase and remove dashes, spaces and dots. Values are NA if the new value is identical to the original value and are only converted if there the original value has 2 segments separated by, punctuation, e.g. "IFN-g" would become "IFNG" but "IFN-g R alpha-chain" would have new value NA. Punctuation is not removed if it separates groups of numbers, e.g. "CD3.1"